An Empirical Investigation into the Perception of Vehicle Source Effects

Many advertising experts believe that “the quality” of an advertising medium may enhance or inhibit the impact of the advertising message. The increment to the advertising response contributed by one advertising medium rather than another is called “the vehicle source effect”. Although a few experimental studies have attempted to measure the size of this effect. as a rule, the media planner has to estimate it either directly or by assessing various related factors. This article reports on an empirical study of the media planner's perception of vehicle source effects. Data from a survey are applied to the measurement of source weights. Then, various techniques are used to identify those attributes of a journal which the media planner associates with a relatively high or relatively low source effect.